For 1 gallon of water try: 1 cup of kosher salt, 1 cup of light brown sugar, 2 Tbs of course pepper, and 3 TBS of Webers kickin' chicken rub. Heb or Walmart should have it. Personally I would take the water to near boiling then add all the ingredients. I think the brine becomes a little more potent that way. I brine my 2 halves for about 10-12 hours.. out of habit.

We use the Holiday brine as I mentioned or a simple brine of 1 gallon water, 1 cup Kosher salt, 1/2 cup brown sugar. Our competition chicken brine is about as complex as the holiday but that recipe is one I keep because it took Debbie and I years to nail the flavor profile. The web is full of brine recipe's just watch out for ones that involve citrus because extended brining with those will effect the meat from the acids.For birds in the 4.5 to 5 pound range we brine for 12 hours and inject.

It's been noted that the bare bones basic brine (try saying that 5 times really fast!) is simply 1 gallon of water, 1 cup kosher salt, 1 cup sugar. To REALLY spin it is to keep that ratio the same regardless of the ingredients. Keep your salt/sugar ratio at 1:1.Wanna add soy sauce? Subtract from the salt you initially add. Same goes for sweet. Subtract a bit from the initial sugar for anything added (honey, maple syrup, etc). This will help combat the brine going too far in 1 direction and help keep it balanced.

Yes, balance is important. It's easy to go all salty on a comp. brine knowing that salt equals calls, however w/out balance you can get a funky salty flavor in your bird that's just not very good and actually tastes off balanced. Start off simple because in the end it can be hard to detect tons of flavor and spices you add to a brine. Some will say that only certain flavor molecules can penetrate the cells of the meat.. maybe.. maybe not.